What's your bounce rate?

[Parallel Project]

We have a bounce rate of approximately 21% of visits to the site are bounces (one pageview only according the Alexa. Is that good? Our sales conversion rate is rubbish at about 1%. But then we are selling courses that cost about £1000 each...anyone know how to increase conversion rates..................

[mecheldsilva]

HI,

can you please let me know why my below site has 70% bounce rate and that also on it main keyword cooking classes in mumbai

www.sweetstoyou.com

please let me know ASAP..

[BruceChang]

Mine is around 50%.

[Romantic18]

Originally Posted by deepsand

As earlier noted, bounce rate alone is of little to no value; in fact, under some circumstances, a high rate can be an indicator of success.

What is and is not acceptable depends on what your goal(s) is(are); and, how well such are being attained.

how can high bouce rate can be indicator of success????

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Romantic18

how can high bouce rate can be indicator of success????

The landing page alone may have completely served the needs of either the user or those of the site's owner/operator.

In the 1st case, where the user is seeking specific content, and the landing page provides precisely such content, there is no need for the user to look elsewhere. Here a low bounce rate may signal that users are not promptly finding what they seek.

In the 2nd case, where the landing page contains a call to action that leads the user to an off-site page, a low bounce rate signals that said call is going unheeded.

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[sritech]

Your bounce rate is a term used in web site traffic analysis to represent the percentage of initial visitors who move on to a new web site, leaving yours.

[tmpcseo]

Don't focus on Bounce Rate. It should not be a worrying factor. Most of the people doesn't visit more pages on any website if they got the information on one page. If you want to reduce your bounce rate then try to add more interesting contents on your website so that visitors will click on other pages also.

[biswarup]

I get around 550 - 600 visitors in my site every day with bounce rate of around 62%

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by tmpcseo

Don't focus on Bounce Rate. It should not be a worrying factor. Most of the people doesn't visit more pages on any website if they got the information on one page. If you want to reduce your bounce rate then try to add more interesting contents on your website so that visitors will click on other pages also.

While you are correct in that one should not give undue concern to bounce rate, in some instances it may very well tell an important tale.

At one extreme, where the site is not monetized, such that there are no financial considerations involved, the bounce rate is, aside from matters of personal satisfaction, immaterial.

At the polar opposite, for a site that is monetized, with the revenues generated being dependent on the user heeding a call to action on the landing page, a high bounce rate might be disastrous.

So, while it would be improper to hold that the lowest possible bounce rate is always a goal to be striven for, it would be equally improper to say that such is never the case.

What is good or bad depends on the purpose of the site.

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[JakeMoore]

Originally Posted by deepsand

At the polar opposite, for a site that is monetized, with the revenues generated being dependent on the user heeding a call to action on the landing page, a high bounce rate might be disastrous.

What is good or bad depends on the purpose of the site.

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A high bounce could be excellent if you are an affiliate marketer and people are leaving your site for the product or service you are marketing.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by JakeMoore

A high bounce could be excellent if you are an affiliate marketer and people are leaving your site for the product or service you are marketing.

Precisely so. The same holds for the case where they leave for a 3rd party page that provides your own shopping services.

For some, though, while the knowledge that such behavior may explain the bounce rate, it is understandably not as comforting as knowing that that actually is the reason.

While good use of analytics code can generally provide data sufficient for determining how many of the "bounces" end up at the desired target, one can easily directly derive such by way of using the same technique that SEs use to gather data re. clicks on organic and PPC links, an interstitial page.

Rather than sending the user directly to the off-site target page, they are first sent to an on-site page, thus recording the visitor's click as a local page request, and there re-directing them to the ultimate target.

Automatic redirection is easily effected by way of a fast, i.e. delay=0, meta refresh.

Alternatively, the interstitial page might be used to provide the user with some important preface to the target page, with a "continue" link to that page.

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[biswarup]

bounce rate can be minimised if the page contains the right information what your clients are looking forward . so its advisable to optimise the landing page with keywords which serve the purpose of the visitor

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by biswarup

bounce rate can be minimised if the page contains the right information what your clients are looking forward . so its advisable to optimise the landing page with keywords which serve the purpose of the visitor

Actually, if the landing page precisely serves all of the visitor's needs, he has no necessary want for viewing other pages on your site. Thus he will read you landing page and leave, yielding a bounce.

This will raise the bounce rate.

Just an example of why bounce rate alone is useless data.

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[biswarup]

I agree with deepsand fully but if the page guides you to get to the next level by that I mean the form or the payment option which are a part of the business site it won't lead to you loosing your visitor

[ankitneuro]

I also feel that if a user get enough information an first page he will surly leave the the site which will increase the bounce rate on other hand if we put the internal link with attractive hyper text then we can force the user to visit other pages which will decrease the bounce rate .

[ankitneuro]

any one know the bounce rate of "wikipedia"????

[biswarup]

Thats really one has to find out the bounce rate of wiki pedia and just now checked the alexa ranking of wiki pedia is 8 . I really wonder how does wiki pedia makes each page so high PR page

[travelcheapuk]

the bounce rate of my website is 47% but i want to know what is the ideal bounce rate and what steps should be taken to improve bounce rate

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by biswarup

I agree with deepsand fully but if the page guides you to get to the next level by that I mean the form or the payment option which are a part of the business site it won't lead to you loosing your visitor

As noted, a desirable user response, such as heeding a call to action which leads to an off-site page, can still be mechanistically counted as a bounce.

That is why I presented two methods for having such not be counted as bounces, thus providing a more accurate, and thus more useful, measure of the true bounce rate.

Originally Posted by ankitneuro

I also feel that if a user get enough information an first page he will surly leave the the site which will increase the bounce rate on other hand if we put the internal link with attractive hyper text then we can force the user to visit other pages which will decrease the bounce rate .

Well, the only way to come close to forcing the user to click on a link of the landing page is for there to be nothing but a link on it!

The best way to get the user to continue on to another page is to entice him there. Think in terms of telling someone all of an engrossing story except the cliffhanger ending, which is on the next page.

Originally Posted by ankitneuro

any one know the bounce rate of "wikipedia"????

Since bounce rate is measured by internal data, there's no way to know that unless they tell us.

Originally Posted by travelcheapuk

the bounce rate of my website is 47% but i want to know what is the ideal bounce rate ...

There is no "ideal."

Originally Posted by travelcheapuk

... and what steps should be taken to improve bounce rate

There are no fixed and certain means of doing such. In fact, if you read the thread in its entirety, you will learn that even the desired goal does not lie in a fixed direction.

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[travelcheapuk]

but you see my website is travel based. people come on my website in they just note down our number n they just give us a call. i think it doesnt take too much time to note down a number, it might be a reason that my bounce rate is 47% ??